


Home is behind

by blackkat



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alt!Kakashi is a troll, Alternate Universes, BAMF Team 7, Canon Konoha is not a happy place, Canon!Kakashi needs all the hugs, Dimension Travel, F/M, M/M, Sort of a fix-it?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-06-10 10:32:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6953101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Experimenting with a dimension-bending dojutsu is probably not the brightest idea ever. </p>
<p>(Or, canon!Kakashi swaps universes with A Snake In the Grass, a Wolf At the Door!Kakashi, and absolutely no one is happy about it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alternate Konoha

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Aiding and Abetting](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6503011) by [Ramabear (RyMagnatar)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyMagnatar/pseuds/Ramabear). 



> This was blatantly influenced by ramabear’s fic _Aiding and Abetting_ , and she kindly flailed with me on Tumblr about AU characters dimension hopping into the canon universe and making everything happy. Which will happen. Eventually. Everyone just needs to angst a lot first. 
> 
> Technically, this follows [ASnake In the Grass, a Wolf At the Door](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2348309), and things will likely be confusing without having read it. But if you are opposed to reading roughly 60k words of my favorite crack pairing and/or want to be baffled along with canon!Kakashi, that should be doable too. Chapters are going to alternate between the two Kakashis, and will be short. This is pretty much written solely for my amusement, because I'm a dork.

The pain is the first thing that registers. Not a stab wound or a concussion or any kind of laceration, he rules out in the first second of awareness, more than familiar enough with such things to know. No, this is an all-over ache, a full-body throbbing that starts deep in his muscles and radiates out. Chakra exhaustion, is his next thought, but his chakra levels feel normal, and there's none of the muscle tremors that would accompany it.

Gentle hands at the next thing he notices, long and cool and callused as they stroke his hair back from his face and rest against his forehead for a moment. He turns into the touch automatically, a soft sound escaping him when the simple act of turning his head makes his entire upper body ache.

“Shh, cub,” a strangely familiar voice offers soothingly. Fingers touch his cheek, brush across his brow, and disappear. A moment later there's the edge of a glass against his lips, and a murmured, “Slowly.”

Kakashi drinks. He hadn’t even been aware that he was thirsty, but the cool water is a relief against the parched dryness of his throat. It’s taken away after a moment, just a little too soon even though Kakashi knows that more won't do his stomach any favors, and then those long fingers curl around his own, lifting them carefully. A pause, and silken strands of hair brush the bare skin of his arm, sliding like warm silk to pool on the bed beside him.

“You gave us quite the scare, cub,” that voice tells him. “All of us. Haven’t we had the talk about not attempting dangerous jutsus without some kind of medic nearby?”

Unfortunately, Kakashi has had that conversation with so many people it hardly helps narrow down the identity of his visitor—though he can't remember sleeping with a nurse who’d be bold enough to call him _cub_. He steels himself for a moment, then cracks open an eye. The light stings, even though it’s low, and he winces. There's a shift from beside him, a click, and the voice says, “There, try it now. The moon is full, but I can draw the blinds if it’s too much.”

Kakashi's eyes aren’t his best feature, even with Obito's last gift to him—uncovered right now, he notes with shock, because all the nurses should know to let him keep his hitai-ate, especially when he’s already suffering from chakra exhaustion or something like it. He blinks the normal eye open, bracing himself, and is relieved when the wash of silvery moonlight is just enough to see by, but not enough to hurt. Cautiously, he tries to turn his head again, to get a glimpse of his companion, but his muscles spasm sharply. A sound of pain escapes him before he can swallow it, and he freezes, not quite ready to tempt fate and try that again.

Another shift, the hair sliding over his skin again as a shape beside him resolves itself into a human, rising from a chair pulled close to the bed. Moonlight sends darts of silver-white brilliance over the otherwise unrelieved darkness of long hair, impossibly black in the shadows, and illuminates moon-pale skin. Hands touch Kakashi's fingers, his elbow, and the visitor leans over him, all of that hair sliding forward like a curtain until it’s tossed back with an annoyed flick of one hand, and suddenly the face is clear.

Given past experiences, Kakashi thinks he is entirely justified throwing a wild, desperate punch right at the Snake Sannin’s startled face.

To the shock of both of them, it connects. There's a loud crack of flesh meeting flesh, a surprised cry, and Orochimaru is nearly lifted right off his feet as he’s thrown back, crashing over his chair and falling into the wall before he can catch himself. Ready for retaliation, Kakashi rolls off the far edge of the mattress despite how every muscle screams at him for it, and is a little confused that he _can_. He would have expected to be strapped down, ready for Orochimaru to experiment on, not—

It’s a hospital room, though, not a lab, with one wide window half-open to let in the night breeze. Kakashi doesn’t wait around to work out the particulars—he hurls himself out the gap, twisting in the air as he descends and calling up enough chakra to cushion his fall. Well-trained reflexes mean he lands on his feet, and he instantly darts into the shadows, but—

“Hey!” A loud, indignant squawk, hands catching his elbows half a second before he bowls the other person over. It’s too little too late, and they both go tumbling, Kakashi landing right on the other man. Their heads bump, their legs tangle, and the man wheezes when Kakashi's full weight comes down on top of him.

It’s a confusing jumble of impressions: dark hair worn long but messy, pale skin, black eyes wide. Firm muscles beneath him, lean but toned, hitai-ate on his brow and—

A laugh, warm and bright like sunshine, and the other man stops wriggling. “Kakashi,” he says, equal parts exasperation and fondness. “Did you sneak out of the hospital _again_? Tsunade-sama is going to _break your face_ , I don’t care if she’s your honorary aunt.”

“Tsunade-sama?” Kakashi asks, bewildered, and then gets his first clear look at the man he ran in to, and—

“I— _Obito_?”

Obito—alive, _alive_ , this has to be a dream or a genjutsu, how the fuck is Obito _here_ and _whole_ and _alive_ —rolls his eyes and lets his head thump back into the dirt of the street. “Oh, like it’s a surprise I’d come visit my boyfriend in the hospital after he freaked me and his entire family the hell out by _collapsing_ on the training grounds _while we were experimenting_ with _my_ Sharingan. And, _ow_ , you're on my hair, Bakashi.”

He understands all of those words, he does, but—stringing them together like that leaves them completely incomprehensible. Kakashi stares down at the boy who died for him, grown up and filled out and smiling at him like he’s the best thing Obito has ever seen, and just—can't. Nothing in him can process this, because if it’s a genjutsu (has to be, _has_ to be) it’s the cruelest he’s ever encountered.

That’s probably to be expected, given that he woke up with the Snake Sannin leaning over him.

Wrenching back, Kakashi staggers to his feet and brings his hands up in the ram seal, snapping out, “ _Kai_ ,” with more force than is entirely necessary. Nothing happens, and he swears under his breath, giving in to instinct and opening his left eye.

From below him there’s a startled sound, a curse, and suddenly Obito is on his feet, shifting into a fighting stance. “You—who the hell are you, bastard? Where’s Kakashi?!”

It isn’t a genjutsu.

It isn’t a genjutsu, and that fact alone steals Kakashi's voice and breath and every last scrap of his reasoning.

“I'm Kakashi,” is all he can manage.

Fury snaps across Obito's mobile features, and it’s impossibly familiar, even framed by the oddly long hair. “Shut up! You're not! You can't be! Kakashi shouldn’t have a Sharingan eye!”

That hurts, burns at him like acid running through his veins, because he _knows that_. He’s never known anything more intimately. “It’s yours,” Kakashi gets out, although the words almost break him. “You—you died for me. It was—you told me to take it so we’d see the future together. And—Rin, she—it activated the Mangekyo—”

The anger is sliding away from Obito, replaced by a bewilderment that mirrors what Kakashi feels. “Rin?” he repeats, clearly baffled. “Our teammate Rin? Married to Gai Rin? Rin who will kick your ass with a smile if you're not back in your hospital bed by the time her shift starts? That Rin?”

There's just—so much. So much wrong with that. Kakashi's brain stalls out, throwing up a white flag of surrender and promptly attempting to leak out his ears. He staggers back, thumping against the rough stone wall and sliding down to plant his ass in the dirt. It seems like the best option for him right now.

“Gai,” he repeats faintly.

Obito grimaces in agreement. “I know, right? But she’s happy, so who cares? They even adopted that one kid—the mini clone. Lee.” He studies Kakashi for a moment, eyes slipping into red-and-black pinwheels for a moment before fading back to solid black, and his shoulders slump a little. “You're…Kakashi. But you're not _my_ Kakashi, are you?”

Mutely, Kakashi shakes his head, feeling utterly numb to shocks after the last five minutes.

Except maybe he’s not, because from the main street a voice he’d never thought to hear again calls, “Kakashi? Kakashi, where are you?”

“Over here,” Obito calls, half-turning to look back towards the hospital, though he keeps one eye on Kakashi. “I found him. Er. Kind of.”

A tall, broad-shouldered figure rounds the corner, framed and backlit by the streetlamp. “Kind of?” that voice repeats, all but stopping Kakashi's heart. It’s full of amusement, good humor clear even over the undertone of worry, and—how long has it been since he heard it? Twenty years, almost to the day. One month short, he thinks, dazed, of when he found a body sprawled out and still in the unforgiving moonlight.

The same moonlight, almost, that illuminates Sakumo's face as he comes to a sudden stop, dark grey eyes widening as he takes in Kakashi's scar, his Sharingan eye, the expression on his face. His breath catches audibly in his throat, and he takes a sharp step back.

“Well,” he says after an endless moment. “I suppose this explains why you punched Orochimaru hard enough to break his nose.”

“ _What_?” Obito hisses, spinning to stare at Sakumo. “Is he all right?”

“I'm fine, Obito, thank you.”

It’s the same voice that still features in some of Kakashi's nightmares, dark and low with an incongruent edge of deadly sweetness. The same careful diction, every word a knife meant to cut and wound. The same eerie looks which, taken piece by piece, are entirely human, but which overall amount to something just different enough to make it unnerving. The chakra that surrounds him is just as abrasive as ever, strong and poised to kill, and Kakashi stiffens warily, reaching for a kunai he isn’t carrying.

But Orochimaru doesn’t do more than glance at him, because Sakumo has turned away, turned towards the Snake Sannin with one hand raised and worry in his eyes, and Orochimaru offers him a small smile as that big hand cups his cheek. There's a bruise across one sharp cheekbone, a smear of blood from a hastily cleaned nosebleed on his skin, and Sakumo smooths it away with a frown. “Lovely,” he starts, tone concerned, but Orochimaru waves him off.

“Tsunade healed it,” he says dismissively. “She ordered us to bring Kakashi back so she could strap him to the bed.” Golden eyes slide sideways, linger on Kakashi for a long moment, and then are veiled by the sweep of lashes. “Though I see now that there's rather more going on than chakra exhaustion. At least this clarifies the spontaneous appearance of a new scar.”

He’s wearing a Konoha hitai-ate, Kakashi realizes, and somehow that feels like the biggest shock out of all he’s experienced tonight. A Konoha hitai-ate on his brow and moonstones in his ears. Moonstones hung with _wolf teeth_ , and Kakashi knows his Clan’s rituals well enough to be certain that they're from his father’s summons.

As far as the Hatake Clan is concerned, Orochimaru and his father might as well be _married_.

“I think,” he says carefully, pressing a hand over his eyes and ignoring the fact that his ass is already firmly planted on the street, “that I need to sit down.”

Obito laughs, and if it’s touched with a hint of hysteria Kakashi thinks that’s entirely understandable. “I think I need a _drink_ ,” he counters. “Or several. This is—weird. _So_ weird.”

“You're both _dead_ ,” Kakashi tells them, because if this is weird, what he’s going through is a thousand times worse. “You're dead, you died because of me, and Orochimaru deserted the village when the Sandaime caught him killing _children_.”

Orochimaru flinches, a full-body jerk, and turns wide, startled eyes on him. Kakashi meets his gaze helplessly, unable to fight the faint tremor of fear that the memory of their last encounter brings. He’s not a man to show fear easily, to so much as _feel_ it, but Orochimaru is a monster. “You're—evil,” he says, though he doesn’t quite mean to. It’s just such a truth—the sky is blue, everyone Kakashi has ever loved is dead, and Orochimaru is the closest thing to irredeemable evil he has ever encountered.

“ _Kakashi_ ,” his father says sharply, just enough bite in his tone that the plea to stop is a reprimand as well. He reaches out, aiming for Orochimaru’s elbow, but the Sannin’s spine is drawn up into a perfect line, his shoulders tense. He turns his head, long hair shifting forward to veil his features, and steps neatly away from the attempted touch.

“Excuse me,” he says, the words cool. “Minato should still be in his office, and Jiraiya with him. I’ll see if they have any idea how to resolve this situation.”

There's a whirl of leaves, a flicker of chakra, and then the three of them are alone in the alley, the oppressive, abrasive edge of power that wraps Orochimaru like a cloak faded into nothingness.

“Fuck,” Obito breathes, reaching up to rake his hands through his long hair. “I—okay, this probably definitely has something to do with my Mangekyo. I’ll just—go. After him. Make sure he doesn’t do something stupid.”

“Thank you, Obito,” Sakumo says tiredly. “This isn’t going to be pleasant, I think.”

Obito snorts. “Oh really?” he asks dryly. “You _think_? I'm going to send a hawk to Nagato, let him know he might have a visitor if we can't talk Orochimaru down.” He takes one last look at Kakashi, offering him a crooked smile, and then the air warps in a tight spiral and he’s gone as well.

With a soft sigh, Sakumo crouches down in front of Kakashi, giving him a smile and holding out his hand. “Come on, cub,” he says gently. “Let’s get you back to the house. I think you’ll be more comfortable there.”

The house. There's only one place he can mean, and Kakashi hasn’t set foot inside it since the night he found his father’s body, cut open by his own tantō with blood staining the floor around him. But—

He looks at the callused hand in front of it, then up into the familiar care-worn face. There are more laugh-lines than he remembers, none of the beaten-down weariness he became used to in the wake of his father’s disastrous mission, and he has to swallow hard against all the many, many words that want to spill out. He doesn’t speak any of them, because he’s useless, stupid, can never manage to say what he should before it’s too late.

Instead, he takes his father’s hand and lets Sakumo pull him to his feet.

And—

Oh.

_Oh_.

Oh no.

“My team,” he says, throat suddenly tight with horror. “They're—”

Alone. Alone in Wave Country, with no way to make it off the bridge alive.

The shock coupled with the pain, egged on by the surge of terror that burns through him like lightning—it’s all too much. Darkness rises up and swallows him, and even though Kakashi fights it, once it closes in he knows no more.


	2. Primary Konoha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone remarked on the time discrepancy in the first chapter (Kakashi waking up at night when the fight on the bridge took place during the day), and that was completely intentional. Canon!Kakashi just wasn’t in the right headspace to make note of it.
> 
> So, uh, whoops I accidentally-on-purpose traumatized Team 7? Sorry.

Quiet, insistent whispering brings Kakashi to the edges of consciousness, three voices overlapping and drowning each other out. He swallows a groan, trying not to move too much. The ache in his muscles is a familiar one, if always unpleasant, and he wonders what jutsu blew up in his face this time. His and Obito's faces, likely, since he seems to recall a trip to the training grounds and a new seal Obito was attempting to devise. Then…an explosion. Maybe a burst of light in there too, since that would explain why Kakashi feels like he’s been staring into the sun before he’s even opened his eyes.

There's a sudden uptick in the volume of the whispers, one voice edged with fear and guilt and something like horror, and it’s a voice that’s actually vaguely familiar as it hisses, “ _Jiji didn’t want me to tell anyone, teme_! I'm sorry, okay, but everyone hates me already and I thought you guys would too!”

Another voice scoffs, low and rough, and the boy—young, like the other, probably just a genin if they’ve even graduated the Academy yet—says sharply, “Dobe! We’re your _team_. Anything that keeps you from being the dead-last and holding us back—”

“Stop it!” A girl’s voice this time, wobbly with emotion but underlain with steel. “Stop it, Sasuke, and you too, Naruto. This—we don’t have time for this. We need to—to contact Konoha. There's no way to finish the contract like this—”

“I don’t know.” The second boy again, grimly amused. “We just killed an A-rank missing-nin and his apprentice, and destroyed an entire criminal empire. I think we’re doing okay.”

The first boy makes a soft, wounded sound, and snaps, “They weren’t just missing-nin, teme, they were _people_!”

“People who were trying to kill us, and our client,” the girl points out, sympathetic but unwavering. “We’re shinobi, Naruto. You know what that means.”

Naruto—like Minato's son? Kakashi frowns inwardly, trying to place the other two voices. Maybe…Naruto's genin team? It’s possible—Kakashi hasn’t had much to do with them, though from what he’s heard they’ve been chewing through jounin sensei like it’s a sport. Not that Kakashi would have expected differently from Mikoto, Kushina, and Mebuki’s children—the three women are some of the scariest in Konoha, and he’s fairly certain their children are physically incapable of not living up to their mothers’ legacies.

There's a pause, and then a sad, grim, “I guess I do now.”

Another stretch of silence, and Sasuke says quietly, “Sakura's right. Most of us are hurt. Our jounin sensei was hit by some kind of jutsu, and none of us are medics. There might be something wrong.”

A scoff from Naruto, slightly livelier than that darkly resigned tone. “More than him being unconscious for the last two days? Ow! Don’t _hit_ me, teme, you're the one being stupid!” He huffs, and then suggests, “We…kind of _did_ finish the contract, though, didn’t we? We protected the bridge and made it so the old drunk could finish it, and that’s what we were supposed to do.”

“You're right, Naruto.” Sakura sounds determined. “We did finish, and it’s time to go home. If we use a messenger bird from the town, it should get to Konoha by…tomorrow night, I think? Then the Hokage will send a team to get us, which will be another two days. So…we should go now to find one.”

“I will,” Naruto volunteers. “Tsunami should know where they keep the messenger birds.”

This would be a good time for Kakashi's vocal cords to start working. He takes a breath, tries to speak, but instead of words it comes out in a rasping cough. Instantly there's a rush of motion, worried voices, and Kakashi gratefully accepts the ice chip that someone places against his lips. It slides like liquid heaven down his throat, soothing the roughness enough that he can manage to get out, “Tell them—send Obito. His fault, so he should suffer for it.”

Something is pressing hard over his left eye. He grimaces, ignores the screaming of his muscles, and gets his hand up far enough to shove it away. The light in the room is low enough that he risks opening his eyes, blinking away the crust of sleep and squinting to make out the three shapes bent over him.

It’s Naruto's genin team, without a doubt. Naruto is pale and worn, his eyes a little red as if he’s been crying, and there's a huge rip in his shirt with newly-healed pink skin beneath it, practically bisecting his chest. Sakura has a long, sloppily-stitched wound slanting down across her face from her hairline on the right side to her jaw on the left. Sasuke's right arm is in a sling, and he has bruises around his neck like someone tried to strangle him.

(Gods, but Mebuki, Kushina, and Mikoto are going to go on a _rampage_. Whatever poor excuse for a jounin sensei let them get this beat up is definitely going to wish this mission had outright killed him.)

There's a moment of utter silence, and six eyes fix on Kakashi's face, wide with shock and no small bit of confusion. “I—Kakashi-sensei?” Sakura asks carefully, almost warily. “What—what happened to your Sharingan? And your scar?”

Kakashi blinks at them, bemused, and painfully pushes himself at least a little more upright. “I'm a Hatake, not an Uchiha,” he says dryly. “Why the hell would I have a Sharingan? Have you three been listening to Shisui again?”

Sasuke makes a small, choked sound. “Shisui?” he repeats, sharp and darkly furious. “Uchiha Shisui is _dead_. Itachi— _that man_ killed him for his eyes.”

But—but Kakashi saw Shisui just yesterday, flinging himself all over Obito and cheerfully propositioning them both, entirely unconcerned with the fact that when they said _only once ever_ to his offer of a threesome they actually meant it. And—Itachi owns a _tea house_. He never even finished his time on a genin team, dropping out after only a handful of weeks. As far as Kakashi is aware, he’s never even managed to awaken his Sharingan.

“That’s not possible,” he says. “Itachi isn’t even a _ninja_. Why would he want his best friend’s eyes?”

Sasuke goes white, so quickly and thoroughly that Kakashi is a little afraid he’s going to faint. Clearly Naruto feels the same way, because he grabs Sasuke's elbow to brace him. “Sasuke?” he asks worriedly, and then turns a glare on Kakashi. “Kakashi-sensei! What the hell did you mean?”

“Your mother is going to wash your mouth out with soap,” Kakashi warns him, too confused to do anything else. “Kushina warned you about…that…” He trails off, because Naruto is suddenly just as pale as his teammate, staring at Kakashi like he’s never seen him before.

“My…mom?” he asks in a very small voice. “I—Kushina? Was that her name?”

 _Was_.

Something is very, very wrong here.

“Uzumaki Kushina, the Kyuubi jinchuuriki,” he says carefully. “Did you get hit on the head during your mission? Can you remember the date?”

The noise Naruto makes is soul-deep and wounded, and suddenly Sasuke is supporting him, not the other way around. “My _mom_ was a jinchuuriki?” he demands. “But—but the fox almost destroyed the village! How could it do that if she was its jinchuuriki?”

“I think,” Sakura says, voice wavering even as she holds up her hands to stop all of them from speaking, “that—that you're not _our_ Kakashi-sensei. You look like him, but—we don’t have any Uchiha in the village beside Sasuke, and Naruto doesn’t have parents, and—and here you have a Sharingan and a scar and you're Copy-Nin Kakashi.”

“Copy-Nin,” Kakashi repeats, dazed. “Not the Silver Wolf?”

The three genin trade glances and then, as one, shake their heads. And in the same moment, what they’ve been calling him finally registers. _“Sensei_? I'm—you're my _students_?”

 

 

They are indeed his students. Or, at least, students of some twisted version of himself, who sounds more like an amalgamation of his and Obito's worst traits put on display to hide—something. Something Kakashi honestly doesn’t really want to know about, if it was bad enough to drive him to such ridiculous lengths in what’s clearly an attempt at distancing himself and probably atoning.

They’ve never heard of Hatake Sakumo. Orochimaru is, apparently, a missing-nin, though Sakura doesn’t know much more than that and the boys are both clueless. Minato is dead, though Naruto at least knows his name, if not the fact that the Yellow Flash is his father, and the Sandaime is Hokage again, even though Kakashi suspects he must be older than dirt by now. Nagato, Yahiko, Konan, and Akatsuki are entirely unknown, despite how much work they should have done already, bringing all of the nations closer to a lasting peace.

There's no Obito here.

Or—or there might have been, once, but there isn’t _now_ , and that’s the most horrifying part of his absence. Of his father’s, of Orochimaru’s. Because there's a space where they should be but it’s _empty_ , and Kakashi wonders bleakly how those holes have been filled. Whether they’ve been filled at all.

By the time the conversation is done, all four of them are stunned and silent, sitting around the room without much of an idea what to say. At length, Naruto mutters an excuse about sending their message and getting them all some food, and ducks out of the room. Kakashi can hear his footsteps clattering down the stairs, a woman’s calm tone, and a few hurried words before a distant door swings shut. Sasuke keeps his eyes on the ground for a moment, then says, “I’ll keep the idiot from getting lost,” and makes his own retreat, carefully not looking at the other two.

“Sorry,” Sakura whispers, twisting her hands in her lap. “They're—it’s just—a shock. This is our first mission outside of the village, and…”

 _It didn’t exactly end well_. The words are as clear as if they’d been shouted, despite the way Sakura bites her lip to keep them in. Kakashi stares at her for a moment, then glances out the window. He recognizes the scenery of Wave Country, though it’s a lot more run-down than he remembers from his last vacation here with Obito. Still, there's a cheer in the faces of the handful of workers he can see trooping towards the house, and when two small figures hurry past them the men call out greetings and thanks.

“What happened?” he asks.

For a moment, Sakura looks like she’s going to cry. Then her expression firms, her shoulders square, and she lifts her head to meet his eyes evenly. “You— _our_ Kakashi-sensei collapsed,” she says. “Right when—oh. You—you don’t know. We were hired to escort Tazuna the Bridge-Builder home, and to guard his bridge until he finished it. But…he lied about how dangerous it was. Gato wanted to control Wave, so he hired missing-nin to kill Tazuna. Momochi Zabuza, his apprentice, and two of his followers tried. We made it here, but…when Zabuza made another attempt to kill Tazuna, we were all waiting on the bridge. Kakashi-sensei collapsed just as he arrived. And—we tried.”

Her voice wobbles, and she swallows hard. “We’re—we weren’t a great team, before. But I think we are now. Sasuke got trapped by the apprentice, and Naruto had to face Zabuza. He—” This time her voice breaks completely, and she ducks her head, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Zabuza impaled him with his sword. I thought he was dead, so—we weren’t going to live through the fight anyway, so I tried to stop Zabuza from killing Tazuna. But the Kyuubi healed Naruto, and Sasuke activated his Sharingan to beat the apprentice, and the three of us killed Zabuza.”

It’s…impossibly impressive, for three genin to manage something like that. They're going to be monsters if given half the chance. And—Kakashi can't quite see Zabuza becoming a missing-nin, not when Kakashi knows him as the proud right hand of Yagura, the beloved Yondaime Mizukage, but everything else about this damned world is twisted around and broken, so why shouldn’t that be, too?

“You're amazing,” he says honestly. “All three of you. There are jounin four times your age who would hesitate to go up against the Demon of the Bloody Mist, and who wouldn’t be able to beat him.”

“We had the Kyuubi, though,” Sakura points out, looking a little steadier. Not quite proud, but Kakashi hopes that will come later. “Sasuke and I didn’t know about it, what Naruto was, but he—he managed to control it, a little, and Zabuza was so surprised that he wasn’t as clever as he could have been.”

“Or you were cleverer,” Kakashi tells her, because self-confidence is something all three of these children are clearly lacking. On instinct, he reaches out, ruffles her hair the way Orochimaru and his father would do to him as a child. She flushes a little, ducking her head, but there's a shadow of a pleased smile on her lips.

“I'm serious,” he tells her. “I—the other me doesn’t sound like a very good teacher, but the three of you are amazing, to have managed what you did. You should be proud that you survived. You're all going to be amazing shinobi.”

“Now we might,” Sakura agrees. She looks up, and there's steel in her eyes that reminds Kakashi of Tsunade at her most determined. “If this hadn’t happened…it’s changed _everything_ , Kakashi-sen—Hatake-san. At least for me.”

For the boys as well, Kakashi suspects, remembering their faces before they left. For better and for worse, like most things in a shinobi’s life. He sighs a little, looking at her scared face, and thinks of platitudes and how he has none to offer. Orochimaru doesn’t believe in using them, and Kakashi's never liked them anyway. In lieu of the words that won't come, he hooks an arm around Sakura's tiny shoulders and pulls her against his side. She doesn’t press her face into his chest, the way he half-expects her to—but then again, the stitching on her face is still fresh, so it would likely hurt too much to try. Instead, she simply leans into him, ducking her head, and lets out a shuddering breath.

They're still in the same positon when the boys come back, and when Naruto sees them his lip quivers and he swallows hard. On instinct—likely the same one that made him hug Sakura in the first place—Kakashi reaches out, and Naruto gives a choked off sob and dives into the awkward hug as well, dragging Sasuke along by the hand. The Uchiha protests, but doesn’t make more than the most cursory of efforts to move away, so Kakashi snakes a hand around the back of his neck in a gentle hold, making sure to include him too.

It’s not enough. These kids are never going to be the same, but—maybe he can help. Even if it’s just with a moment’s comfort, maybe he can ease their hurt a little.


	3. Alternate Konoha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y’all are crazy. I expected this story to get a few “ha ha look what the crazy person’s doing now” hits, not…this. Which is awesome, yes, but very, very unexpected. So everyone rocks, and therefore gets another chapter. 
> 
> (On another note, Kakashi’s scene with Sakumo post-Pein always makes me cry, and I love it. There are parallels here, but all credit to Kishimoto.)

It’s no longer dark when Kakashi wakes again. There's soft sunlight spilling through the windows, and instead of the almost painful sterility of the hospital, the soft bed beneath him smells like _him_. Like him and another body, once familiar (though never _this_ familiar) but long since forgotten, earth and warmth and the very first tracery of green in spring. He breathes it in, eyes closed, and thinks of a dark-eyed boy who laughed so freely, who gave so much of himself and never asked for anything back.

A soft rustle drives him up, every sense alert and his hand already reaching for the kunai he keeps beneath his pillow. But the blade is gone, and he feels his heart slip-stumble into triple time as he forces his eye open, finds himself facing inhuman golden eyes and death-pale skin. Instinct pushes him to grab for chakra, use his Sharingan, kill the enemy, but Kakashi is hardly a creature driven entirely by instinct. He takes a breath and lets it out, lets it settle, and carefully withdraws his hand from beneath the pillow.

“Good morning,” Orochimaru says, as composed as if this is a ritual he undertakes every morning. And—and _what's to say it isn’t_ , is the horrifying thing.

“Good morning,” Kakashi returns, if a little weakly. He eyes the tray in Orochimaru’s hands—black tea, miso with eggplant, a bowl of rice and pickles, and wonders if he’s really going to eat something that _Orochimaru of the Sannin_ prepared for him.

With the casual grace of an uninterested predator, Orochimaru crosses the room to set the tray down on the nightstand, shifting a teetering pile of scrolls to the floor to make room for it. He presses the cup of tea into Kakashi's hands and orders, “Drink. Eat. Your father is working himself into a state worrying about you, and a meal will go a long way towards easing his mind.”

Kakashi takes a sip, is pleased to find it unsweetened, and realizes as the first mouthful hits his stomach that he’s _ravenous_. Apparently he really is going to eat it. It’s probably not poisoned. Hopefully. Maybe.

“Do you have any idea how to send me back?” he asks as he swallows the rice as quickly as possible. He doesn’t want to taste it if it _is_ laced with something. Better to die in peace with a full stomach, right? That sounds like a good philosophy, anyway.

Orochimaru pauses with his hands on the window latch, not turning to look at the Copy-Nin. “Not yet,” he says quietly. “Jiraiya, Obito, and Minato are working on reconstructing what could have gone wrong, but it was an experimental jutsu used in conjunction with Obito's unique Mangekyo, so it’s taking some time.”

“I have a team,” Kakashi says, low and sharp and on the verge of true anger. He sets the bowl aside, stomach churning nauseatingly, and takes a breath. “A _genin_ team. We were on a mission, in Wave, and there were complications—”

“And I,” Orochimaru says, equally sharp, spinning to fix Kakashi with a furious glare as his chakra crackles threateningly, “have a _son_ , Hatake! One who doesn’t think I'm a monster, or flinch whenever I look at him! One who has no idea about your world, and all the darkness in it! Who could be in _danger_!”

A ringing silence follows those words, deafening and daunting, and then Orochimaru runs a hand over his face. “Forgive me,” he says more quietly. “That was…unprovoked. But we’ve managed to determine that you and your counterpart were swapped, so to speak. He’ll be where you last were, and I am absolutely certain he will defend you genin team with everything he has.”

Kakashi is utterly terrible at any form of apologies, so he simply nods and hopes the words are implied. He stares at the Snake Sannin, at the silver-and-moonstone earrings, at the lack of malice written into his pale features, and blurts, “How?”

That earns him the cool arch of one narrow brow. “How did you swap? Or how am I certain?”

He shouldn’t have asked. Kakashi huffs softly at himself, tugging his mask back up automatically, and clarifies, “How are you—like this?”

There's a long pause, carefully considering. Then Orochimaru snorts, quietly amused, and says, “Sakumo saved my life. In many more ways than simply taking a blade for me. You were just over a year old, but—he made me family, and gave me no choice in the matter.”

“Now that,” a fond voice says from the doorway, “is somehow both a gross exaggeration and a complete understatement. Your skill with words never ceases to amaze me, lovely.”

“And how would you describe it, then?” Orochimaru retorts, slightly prickly, but the expression in his eyes is startlingly warm. He turns to look at Sakumo, leaning against the doorframe, with a foreboding expression, but there's somehow no threat to it at all.

“You take all the romance out of it,” Sakumo complains, though he’s still smiling. Turning his gaze on Kakashi, he clarifies with a grin, “He was lonely, abandoned, and so like a knight I swooped in and—oof!”

“Ignore the idiot,” Orochimaru says coolly, withdrawing his fist from Sakumo's gut. “He behaved like a fool, followed me around like the flea-bitten, mange-ridden mutt he is, and at some point capture-bonding set in and I was unable to rid myself of him—Sakumo! Sakumo, _stop it_!”

Sakumo just laughs, hoisting Orochimaru up in his arms and tipping him neatly over his shoulder. He wraps one arm around the backs of Orochimaru’s knees to keep from getting kicked, and when the Sannin makes a grab for his face with the clear intent to do harm he whirls around in a tight circle, making Orochimaru abort the movement to hiss and clutch his shoulders.

“You oversized _oaf_!” he snaps. “Put me down, Sakumo, or I will bite you!”

“Maybe later, lovely,” Sakumo says cheerfully. He drops down on the foot of Kakashi's bed, letting Orochimaru slide down into his lap, and promptly suffers an elbow to the stomach that makes him wince. “Easy, easy, or you're going to damage parts you're actually fond of.”

On the list of things Kakashi never wanted or needed to hear his father say, that’s in the top five. Maybe actually the top three. He winces, and is just slightly grateful when Orochimaru makes a sound of wordless fury and smacks Sakumo hard on top of the head. The White Fang winces and holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay, fine, I’ll stop. But you have to tell the cub the _actual_ story, all right?”

“I have to do no such thing,” Orochimaru retorts, an edge of silky menace to his words. “Besides, I'm sure Hatake has no desire to hear stories about strangers—”

“Orochimaru.”

And—oh. That’s his father’s disappointed voice, only rarely used in Kakashi's experience, with just the faintest undertone of _I love you, please try just a little harder_ that has the unintended side-effect of making the recipient feel like absolute trash. Kakashi twitches on instinct, ready to duck his head and scuff his sandals against the floor like he’s three years old again, being reprimanded for mocking Gai.

The effect on Orochimaru is even more obvious.

Golden eyes go wide, then narrow sharply, and in a confusing whirl of movement half-obscured by sweeping silks Orochimaru slides off the bed, twists away from the attempt Sakumo makes to catch his arm, and heads for the doorway as if in the grasp of a temper. But—his chakra is churning with confusion, like a sea beneath a winter storm, and the line of his shoulders is drawn painfully tight.

Sakumo mutters a curse, casts Kakashi an apologetic, distracted smile, and follows after the other man. Long strides carry him to the door before Orochimaru can make it there, and he reaches out again, palm out and flat as if to push the Snake Sannin back.

Kakashi catches half a glimpse of Orochimaru’s face, drawn into a vicious hiss, and doesn’t need to be a genius to know that this is going to end badly.

“Lovely—” Sakumo starts soothingly, but Orochimaru snaps, “Out of my way, mutt,” and moves in a quicksilver streak that Kakashi's normal eye can hardly follow. There's a lunge, a twist, a heave, and Sakumo yelps as he goes flying over Orochimaru’s hip to land heavily in the middle of the floor on his back. Without even pausing to glance back, Orochimaru sweeps out, long black hair dancing like a victory banner behind him as he turns the corner with just a little too much speed for true composure.

There's a long, drawn-out moment of silence. Then Sakumo wheezes lightly, coughs, and bangs his head against the floorboards a few times.

Cautiously, Kakashi leans over the edge of the bed to raise a brow at him. “Impressive,” is all he says.

That at least gets him a laugh, and it’s just the same as he remembers—warm and happy and fond, deep and all but tangible. “Isn’t it?” Sakumo asks, and the humor is self-directed but no less genuine for that. “That would be the traditional Hatake Clan maneuver—open mouth, insert foot, and choke.”

Orochimaru’s presence is still nearby, hasn’t vanished the way it did last time, and Kakashi casts a glance in the direction the snake summoner disappeared in. “Are you going to go after him?”

Sakumo hesitates, then sighs, levering himself up on his elbows. “In a bit,” he says regretfully, running a hand through his hair. “His temper’s boiling right now. I’ll let it cool to a simmer before I try anything, or it won't end well.” His smile is affectionate, though, and when he hauls himself up to sit on the edge of the bed again, there's a steady patience that says this is something he has experience with.

Still, Kakashi isn’t entirely certain _any_ of them have enough experience at _anything_ to really deal with this situation. It’s…hardly something that’s covered in the shinobi handbook.

He stiffens, a little, when a big hand settles on his shoulder, squeezing gently, and he automatically looks up into his father’s dark eyes, soft and a little sad. Whatever Kakashi had thought to say dies stillborn on his tongue, and his lungs suddenly feel about three sizes too small to function correctly.

“Cub,” his father says gently, and—

“No one’s called me that since I was two years old,” Kakashi manages to get out through a throat clogged with too many words, none of them the right ones.

Humor slips across Sakumo's face, and he smiles wryly. “I can imagine. That’s when you started objecting to it here. Of course, Orochimaru is _still_ allowed to call you that, which I don’t think is really fair, but—”

 _And I have a_ son _!_

It’s—astonishing, to think that some version of himself, somewhere, looks up to Orochimaru as a father. And even more mind-bending, to think that Orochimaru feels the same way in return. Kakashi takes a moment to get his bearings, tries to drag the universe back under control when it’s pinwheeling wildly around him, and asks cautiously, “I…like him?”

Surprise and then sadness cross Sakumo's face in quick succession, and he sighs. “Cub,” he says, wry and chiding, “you _adore_ Orochimaru. I know the worlds are different, but—I honestly can't imagine that being different.”

Kakashi thinks of killing intent heavy and cruel enough to stop his heart in his chest, of a stare so malicious that it froze even him, with years of ANBU experience and a reputation for uncaring fearlessness, squarely in his tracks.

But—but that version would never have let Sakumo manhandle him like a life-size doll, pull him into his lap and laugh at him and touch his cheek. That version would have strapped Kakashi to a table, cut him open to see how he worked, not brought him tea just to stop an alternate version of his father from worrying.

It’s easy enough to look at that as Sakumo's influence, especially given Orochimaru’s words about Sakumo saving him. Now Kakashi forces himself to look at the reverse—because of Orochimaru, Sakumo is still alive. And that—it _aches_ , that Kakashi wasn’t enough to save his father, and somehow, in some way, the coldest, cruelest bastard Kakashi has ever met _was_.

“You.” He chokes, swallows down the nausea of remembering that scene in the moonlight, all too clear when he’s in his family home for the first time in twenty years. “You—committed suicide. After your mission. And I—I asked you why you would have done something like that, betrayed the village like that, and when you didn’t have an answer I _left_. You—when I came back, you were—”

“Oh, cub.” Sakumo's voice is achingly soft, with an edge of desperation. Strong arms come up, wrap around Kakashi's shoulders and pull him into a tight, encompassing hug that steals his breath and makes his eyes sting. Sakumo presses his lips to Kakashi's forehead, then his cheek to Kakashi's hair, and breathes out a long, shaky sigh. “Gods, Kakashi, that wasn’t your fault. None of it was. There was so much more, and—you’d graduated, and you were so smart, so clever, I thought…” He trails off, shakes his head. “I’d…considered it. Just—considered. I thought you didn’t need me anymore, that you’d be better off without me.”

Kakashi had always pushed his independence, though, tried to be strong, tried not to need his father. And—he pretended too well, didn’t he? Sakumo believed him.

“I'm sorry,” he says, breathless and gasping. “I'm sorry.”

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” Sakumo tells him, quiet and fierce. “Not a single damned thing, Kakashi. Your father and I might as well be the same person, and I am _certain_ he would say the same thing: you're not to blame for my actions.”

Kakashi spent so long resenting his father, resenting the decision that Sakumo made, that took him away so suddenly, so devastatingly. And maybe this man isn’t _his_ father, the one he grew up with and idolized and loved so fiercely, but—

 _I understand now,_ Kakashi thinks, and hopes that somehow, somewhere, his father will hear it. _You made the only decision you could live with, and you chose it for the sake of everyone in Konoha. Obito's death—it made me see. I don’t hate you. I never did. I'm proud of you, but I miss you, too._

As if he can hear the thought, Sakumo hugs him a little tighter, and whispers, “Thank you, Kakashi.”


	4. Primary Konoha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look look look! RTPunk did _gorgeous_ art of Sakura and her future scar! [Over here!](http://rtpunkz.tumblr.com/post/144991839808/home-is-behind)
> 
> Also, Snake & Wolf!Kakashi is a bit of a jerk here, but he’s figuring out just how much has gone wrong in this Konoha, so I hope it doesn’t come off as callous. That wasn’t my intention. He’s just…dealing better than canon!Kakashi, but - that’s probably not saying a lot.

By the time a retrieval team shows up from Konoha, Kakashi is walking more or less under his own power, which is a great relief. All three of not-quite-his students have been hovering a bit, which is oddly cute, but also unnecessary.

He has, at least been able to get around with his counterpart’s abandoned crutches, and he’s used that bit of mobility to try and figure out just what the hell the other Kakashi _was_ teaching them, since as far as he can tell the answer is “nothing”.

His respect for all three genin is massive, and increasing by the day. That they managed to beat _Zabuza_ with a handful of poorly remembered jutsus and the most basic shinobi tools, and survive with as much of themselves intact as they did, is nothing short of a damned miracle. What praise he manages to get them to accept is taken with shy, somewhat wondering smiles, and by the time the three days have passed, Sakura has mostly stopped wincing when she sees a mirror, while the tightly-wound bitterness and blind thirst for betterment in Sasuke has eased just a little, and Naruto's smile has started to appear with more regularity.

It’s such a little thing, but Kakashi remembers the aftermath of his father’s disastrous mission, remembers feeling like the world was slipping sideways out from beneath his feet, and how Orochimaru anchored him. A few wise words, hard-won in the course of his life, a few gentle touches to bring him back to earth, and—it was enough. Between that and a new friendship with Obito, it was what he needed to help him overcome all the darkness in his head.

These three—they have each other. And whatever they’ve said about not being a good team before this mission, it’s definitely not true anymore. Now there's a secret shared between them, a struggle, a victory. They’ve gone right to the edge of death and pulled each other back again, and Kakashi knows that’s what forges the very best teams. Orochimaru’s team experienced it, Kakashi's team experienced it, and now Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke have as well. Whatever possibility there was of them breaking apart, as some genin teams tend to, Kakashi doesn’t think it’s much of a possibility anymore.

“They're not gonna lock you up and torture you or anything, are they?” Naruto asks as they wait on the bridge for their escort. His nose is wrinkled worriedly, and Kakashi can't help but smile a little.

“Ma, ma, I don’t think so,” he answers lazily, even though it a slight concern. “I wouldn’t know anything important to them, anyway. It seems like my world is very different.”

He’d like to figure out just _how_ different, maybe even when the two dimensions hit a point of divergence. He assumes there is one, since what history Sakura can remember seems the same right up until the end of the Second Shinobi World War. It’s afterwards that things get sketchy, because her knowledge isn’t detailed enough for Kakashi to ask the questions he needs to.

They're only twelve. It’s hard to remember, sometimes, but at the same time it’s one of those things Kakashi is finding impossible to forget.

“I think I see them,” Sasuke reports, standing perfectly balanced on the railing. “Three people, shinobi uniforms.”

Glad that the crutches are languishing back at Tazuna’s house, Kakashi pushes to his feet, finds his balance despite a few lingering twinges in his muscles, and tucks his hands into his pockets. “Shall we go meet them?” he suggests.

“Come on, teme!” Naruto calls, bolting down the bridge. “Last one there has to carry the winner’s pack!”

“Dobe!” Sasuke hisses, but takes off after him.

Kakashi watches them go, absently checking their forms—they're using chakra to increase their speed, which they were having a hard time mastering just two days ago—and is impressed all over again by their ability to grasp chakra concepts. For all that Sasuke calls Naruto the dead last, they're roughly equal there. Then, realizing that the third genin isn’t anywhere near the racing pair, he glances down to see Sakura keeping pace with him, exasperated eyes on the boys.

“Not feeling up to a race?” he asks mildly.

Sakura rolls her eyes. “ _Boys_ ,” she says witheringly, in exactly the tone Rin always used to use.

It’s so familiar that Kakashi can't help but laugh, patting her consolingly on the head. “Someday,” he says sagely, “you’ll realize that not all boys have cooties. And that will be the day your father invests in the largest sword he can reasonably swing, and locks for all your windows.”

Sakura rolls her eyes at him, too. “I like boys,” she says primly. “And Sasuke is an _amazing_ boy, but he’s still a _boy_.” She pauses, looking a little thoughtful, and then smiles to herself. “I didn’t really realize that before, I guess.”

Kakashi chuckles. “Extended exposure can do wonders for a crush,” he agrees, eyes crinkling with mirth. He remembers when Rin had a crush on him, which was especially awkward given his own feelings for Obito—thankfully requited—and exactly how many missions it took to wear off. It was somewhere around the point where she had to drag both him and Obito five miles through a swamp, with both of them paralyzed and a pack of Kiri hunter-nin on their tail—that’s what she claims, at least, when they're allowed to talk about the subject at all.

Sakura doesn’t answer, but her green eyes flicker up to him, then back to Sasuke. The other Konoha nin are clearly visible now, and Kakashi raises his brows a little at the sight of Gai, Genma, and Aoba talking to the boys. As Kakashi and Sakura approach, Genma straightens from his slouch, lazy hazel eyes darting over Kakashi's face, then skipping down his body. It’s nothing sexual, even though Genma's an incorrigible flirt at the best of times—more of an assessment, Kakashi thinks, and can't help a flicker of amusement.

Then he turns his gaze to Gai, and oh, that’s definitely not an opportunity he’s _ever_ going to pass up.

“Yo,” he says, giving the man an absent wave. “Gai, my eternal rival. Nice to see you're doing well.”

There's an incredulous pause from both of the tokujo. Genma pulls the senbon from his mouth, eyes it like it betrayed him, and then looks at Aoba. The other man looks back, eyes wide and slightly horrified, and then tips his sunglasses down to stare disbelievingly at Kakashi over their tops.

Gai is honest-to-god _crying_. There are tears welling up in his eyes and streaming down over his expression of utter, astonished bliss. “My—my Eternal Rival!” he wails. “You’ve _acknowledged me_! This is truly the springtime of youth in my heart!”

Sasuke eyes the green spandex, the tears, the spontaneously appearing sunset, and edges back like it’s all contagious, snaking out a hand to grab Naruto's collar and drag him along. Tellingly, Naruto goes without protest.

“Er,” Sakura says weakly. “Is he…different, where you're from?”

Watching Gai pirouette in place, Kakashi snorts. “No,” he says dryly. “Gai is _exactly_ the same.”

She looks dubious. “And you're sure you want to…?”

Kakashi smiles cheerfully, thinking of his unsuspecting counterpart. “Oh, _absolutely_.”

It’s a shitty situation all around, without a doubt. He might as well get what entertainment he can out of it before Obito fixes whatever ridiculousness his Mangekyo caused and whisks him back.

And Obito had _better_ whisk him back, or else. Come to think of it, his double had better not try anything with his boyfriend, either.

“I hope you know,” Genma says with a touch of aggravation, which for the easygoing tokujo is the equivalent of anyone else’s straight-up brawl, “that he’s going to be _insufferable_ now.”

“I thought he was always insufferable,” Kakashi says brightly. “Sorry, my mistake. This dimension travel just confuses me so much, you know?”

“Right.” Genma gives him a look that may as well be subtitled _I'm calling you on your utterly obvious bullshit_ , tucks his senbon back between his teeth, and says a little more loudly, “Gai, let’s go. We need to scout the road back. No challenges until the mission is done, remember? Save it for the village.”

Gai and his longsuffering minder—some things, Kakashi thinks with entirely too much amusement, never really change.

“Wow,” Aoba offers after a moment of silent awe. “You are _such_ an asshole. Even to yourself, which is actually a relief to know. It almost makes up for all the flashbacks to ANBU that you just gave me with that voice.”

“What voice?” Kakashi asks, mild and innocent as a summer sky.

“That voice,” Aoba tells him dryly, then casts an eye over the three genin, who are grouped behind Kakashi in a tight knot. “You kids good to walk for a bit?” he asks. “Once we’re back in Fire Country we’ll take a break, and Genma can look you over. He’s decent as a medic, even if he isn’t one officially.”

“We’re fine,” Sakura says, tipping her chin up determinedly. Halfway through the motion she freezes, clearly remembering her new scar, but before she can react Naruto grabs her left hand, and Sasuke takes her right. They pull her forward, away from Aoba, right past Gai and Genma, like they're aiming to run all the way to Konoha and be the first back to the village.

Kakashi doesn’t call them back. Whatever they're feeling right now, he’s certain they’ve earned it.

There's a long pause as Kakashi heads after not-quite-his team, Aoba in step with him, and then the tokujo sighs softly. “Fuck,” he says, low but heartfelt.

Kakashi hums in quiet agreement. “Everything was over by the time I woke up. They took down Momochi Zabuza by themselves.”

Aoba pushes his sunglasses up over his crooked hitai-ate, into his messy black hair, and then rubs a hand over his face. “ _Fuck_ ,” he repeats tiredly. “And you? How did you end up an entire dimension away from where you're supposed to be? Assuming what the kids wrote in their letter was correct.”

A slightly wry smile crosses Kakashi's face, and he doesn’t bother to hide it. “My boyfriend and I were playing around with his dimension-warping manifestation of the Uchiha dojutsu. I think it blew up in our faces.”

Aoba snorts. “No shit. And—I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume little Sasuke over there isn’t your boyfriend, so…other Uchihas?”

“All of them,” Kakashi confirms. “Itachi isn’t a shinobi, and never really was. He owns a tea house on the western edge of the village.”

“And the world is a better place for it. Or yours is, at least,” Aoba mutters, then sees something in the pair ahead of them that makes him say, “Whoops, okay, I’d better go save Genma from murdering his genin teammate.”

It all looks perfectly friendly to Kakashi—well, Gai's version of friendly, so maybe Aoba is right to be worried. “Genma?” he asks. “You're not going to save Gai?”

With a laugh, Aoba waves that off. “Gai can save himself. I'm trying to get into Genma's pants, and he’d make a better damsel type even if I wasn’t.”

More than Kakashi ever wanted to know, honestly, especially since he’d been under the impression Aoba was straight. He hides a wince, reaching up to push his hitai-ate out of his face. It’s a little too loose, too used to being tied so it slants across his face, and keeps falling down.

There's a brief, quiet argument between the two tokujo, with Gai attempting to butt in and being soundly squashed, before Genma throws up his hands, says something that makes Aoba grin, and falls back to walk next to Kakashi. Kakashi eyes him for a moment, then asks brightly, “Babysitting duty? Did you draw the short straw?”

“ _Jounin_ -sitting duty,” Genma retorts, though there's a familiar crooked curve to one corner of his mouth that speaks of his good humor reasserting itself. “Which is a hundred times worse. But Gai's going to scout ahead to make sure none of Gato’s thugs are still around, Aoba's going to keep an eye on the kids since he’s got more psych training, and that leaves me with you.”

“So I'm the consolation prize?”

“Fuck no, you're my punishment for atrocities I must have committed in my past lives.”

Kakashi chuckles, and when Genma eyes him strangely he raises a brow at the tokujo. Seeing as that expression is almost identical to the one Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto gave him the first time he laughed… “Don’t tell me. Other me doesn’t laugh at anything ever? I'm committing sacrilege to his memory by showing amusement?”

Genma studies him for a long moment, gaze assessing, and then looks away. “Doesn’t have a hell of a lot to laugh about that I've seen,” he says, mild as winter sunlight. “I don’t know about where you come from, but…none of us have had it easy, not even when we were kids. Our Kakashi most of all. He’s strong, but…even the strongest people can break. I think he hit ‘broken’ about ten years ago, and that’s not always the kind of thing that gets better with time.”

The teasing remark catches in Kakashi's throat and sticks there, making it hard to breathe. He looks away, too, takes a moment, and asks, “My father?”

“Suicide,” Genma answers bluntly, though not unkindly. “You found the body.”

“Obito?”

“Killed on a mission to Kannabi Bridge, which helped end the Third Shinobi World War. He pushed you out of the way of a Doton jutsu, and gave you one of his eyes before he died.”

“Rin?”

“Kiri captured her and turned her into an unstable jinchuuriki, then stuck enough seals on her that she couldn’t tell anyone. She used you to commit suicide rather than endanger the village.”

Gods, Kakashi doesn’t want to ask about anyone else. He doesn’t know if he could stand it to hear of yet another gruesome death. But… “And…Minato-sensei and Kushina?”

At that, Genma's face shutters even more, all but the faintest hint of pain locked away beneath a perfectly placid expression. “The Kyuubi escaped while Kushina was giving birth, and it killed her. Minato gave his life to seal it into Naruto. The Sandaime wanted him to grow up as normal as possible, so everyone was forbidden from mentioning the Kyuubi around him, but…there’s a lot of resentment. A lot of hate.” He clicks the senbon between his teeth, eyes fixed on the horizon, and then sighs softly. “Like I said, it’s been hard.”

Kakashi breathes in, breathes out, and gets his voice back under control. “Well,” he says lightly. “At least other me has the joy of Gai to keep him from despair.”

At that, Genma gives in and laughs, tugging off his bandana and raking a hand through his brown hair. “Right,” he says mirthfully. “And I'm sure you're going to tell Gai that, the next chance you get.”

“Oh, definitely,” Kakashi agrees innocently. “Such a good friend—don’t you think he deserves to know?”

“I think you’d better hope that our Kakashi never figures out how to jump dimensions on his own. Otherwise he’s going to find you and kick your ass.”

“Not if I kick his first,” Kakashi counters, and his eyes flicker to the three genin walking with Aoba. He’s not surprised to find he means it with every bit of his heart. If other him doesn’t get his act together despite his trauma, Kakashi will find a way to make him regret it. Those kids deserve better.


	5. Alternate Konoha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The flower pins idea comes from the unspeakably lovely ClassicalCassiopeia on Tumblr, who did [fan art of Orochimaru sporting them](http://classicalcassiopeia.tumblr.com/post/145127642968/orochimaru-the-colour-version-for) and a drabble for Snake & Wolf. You can find it under my Snake & Wolf tag over there, where I'm blackkatmagic.

Kakashi is a little relieved when a messenger hawk summons his father shortly after Kakashi's breakdown. Emotion isn’t something he’s ever had much intention of showing, and whenever he does it’s a slip. A weakness, but out on display. Kakashi's always had too many of those anyway.

His skin prickles, crawls. This was his _father_. He finally got to give some version of him an apology, decades overdue, and was not just forgiven, but acquitted. The realization of it sets his head to spinning, threads restlessness through his limbs, and he pulls himself out of bed. It smells like—like another life, another person’s scent twisted into his own as if it’s meant to be there. In the aftermath of his conversation with Sakumo, it’s not something he can deal with, this look at possibilities.

It’s hard _not_ to think about Obito, though, surrounded by his scent, with an old hitai-ate on the bedside table that can't be this Kakashi's, a pair of ANBU masks just visible through the half-open closet door. Two swords, two flak jackets, two sets of weapons pouches, books that Kakashi has never cared for mixed in with old favorites—though there’s no Icha Icha that he can see, and he wonders if it’s entirely absent or just well-hidden. The latter, he assumes, because differences aside he’s still _himself_.

This is a mixed life, the room of two people who share far more than just a bed. And it baffles Kakashi, a little, because the Obito he remembers was all sharp edges and anger, always trying but never good enough.

(Except that’s not true, is it? Because Kakashi has always been good, always lived up to the label of genius he’s worn for so long, but Obito could match him, couldn’t he? Obito landed hits and dodged Kakashi's strikes, faced him squarely when the majority of chuunin wouldn’t have managed even that. Sharingan or not, Obito was never _weak_. Foolish, frequently, but strong, no matter what his alienation from his clan said.)

To imagine that anyone, especially _him_ , could make it past the walls Obito always threw up is…difficult. Rin managed it, but then, Rin had known Obito since they were four years old—there was history between them in a way there never was with Kakashi. Between Kakashi and Obito there was only failure, belief skewed in opposite directions. Kakashi was always so damned _dismissive_ of the dead-last Uchiha, not even good enough to bear his family’s dojutsu or manage their signature jutsu. And Obito knew that, fought back against it, pushed for Kakashi to acknowledge him and failed every time.

That’s—that’s not a cycle that suggests a tidy resolution in a romantic relationship. It sure as hell doesn’t invite the closeness of them sleeping in the same room, having _been_ sleeping in the same room for a very long time if the smells are right.

Kakashi very carefully shuts away that train of thought before it can lead anywhere close to _what if_ , because those two words are more than capable of destroying him if he lingers on them in more than passing. They're everything he’s ever wanted, and everything he doesn’t need to know.

The house is quiet when he slips into the hall, but not empty. Orochimaru’s chakra has settled, slipped into something closer to passive, and it makes Kakashi pause, morbidly curious despite himself. Or, more literally, _because_ of himself—because of this self, this version of him, and Sakumo's _you adore Orochimaru_.

Orochimaru knew his favorite foods, didn’t hesitate to bring them to him. Knew how he likes his tea, and it’s mind-bending enough to make Kakashi's head hurt, because _what_. Really, this is all ridiculous. This is all _insane_. Orochimaru might as well be his stepmother, and from what Kakashi has seen he’s not even the evil kind.

 _And I have a_ son _, Hatake!_

He…recognizes the wild, wounded sort of pain that was in Orochimaru’s eyes—has seen it in a mirror, whenever he can bear to look. _I'm losing everything_ , that expression says. _Everything is being taken away from me._

That’s what turns his feet, in the end. Even more than a desire to avoid the room where his father’s body once lay, more than a desire to avoid the place where he knows there's a bloodstain, but which simply _doesn’t exist_ in this world, it’s a desire to understand that pushes Kakashi towards the garden in the back.

The sun is high, and creeping higher, but the yard is cool and lush. There's the sound of water running close at hand, vine maples and wisteria and the fading scent of jasmine on the breeze. There's nightshade, too, and oleander, aconite, monkshood—they're planted along the far fence, carefully maintained, with a low border of stones warning the casual visitor to keep their distance. Irises, too, deep violet in the sunlight, laid out in a careful pattern like—

A seal. Kakashi blinks, opens his Sharingan to check for chakra, and has to snort at the whimsy of a dormant barrier seal made out of flowers and strung together with familiar razor-edged chakra. When he looks more closely, it’s not the only one—there are several more, enough to make the house into a veritable fortress, carefully arranged around the edges of the wall. Orochimaru’s touch, Kakashi assumes, though as far as experimentation goes…well. It’s—not the type he would normally expect from the Sannin.

Even more curious now, he follows the beacon of Orochimaru’s chakra down a curving garden path, through an archway hung with night-blooming jasmine, and emerges near a small pond he’d all but forgotten existed. A willow bends out over the water, branches trailing, and across from it is a low stone bench of simple lines. Orochimaru is seated there, still in the shadow of the surrounding greenery even as the sun climbs, and he looks…calm. Calmer than before, and Kakashi hadn’t realized he had even truly been upset until this moment.

There's a spill of white and silver against the iris-purple of his robe, dozens of tiny hairpins scattered across his lap. Each sports a small white flower on the tip, and that’s an unexpected bit of whimsy too—white snakeroot, painfully ironic given the man holding them, but pretty enough, Kakashi supposes. Likely not Orochimaru’s own choice, the pins—Kakashi wonders if Orochimaru was offended when Sakumo gave them to him, if it was another showing like in his room, or if romantic gestures are something Orochimaru takes in stride.

“I believe,” Orochimaru says, quiet but steady, and Kakashi doesn’t quite jump even if he tenses, “that I owe you another apology, Kakashi. It is…getting to be a bad habit.”

Kakashi notes the use of his given name, which Orochimaru has carefully avoided before now. Notes the way golden eyes are carefully fixed on the pool and the play of light on the water, rather than turning to him. “You do?” he asks, and is a little confused by the thought. This Orochimaru really hasn’t done anything except soothe him in the hospital and bring him breakfast in bed.

Pale, slim hands rise to pull distractedly at one earring, and Orochimaru inclines his head. His expression is visible, his hair pulled back by a worn grey ribbon, and it leaves the lines of unhappiness clear. “I have been…distancing you. Attempting to think of you as someone who has nothing to do with us, or with our history. A stranger, invading our life, who took our son away.”

Kakashi stares at him for a long moment, cautiously testing the air, and can't feel so much as a trace of killing intent. Deciding it’s safe enough, he takes a seat on the far end of the bench, enough distance between them that he can react if he has to, and says, “That seems reasonable.”

The hand freezes on the wolf’s tooth, then lets go. Instead, Orochimaru picks up one of the pins, twisting it between his fingers. “Does it,” he says, statement rather than question, and the amusement in his voice is biting-sharp. “The problem would be, however, that you _are_ Kakashi. You have his mind and his heart and the mirror of his soul. Everything he is, you are as well.” He keeps his eyes on the water, on the red-gold flash of a surfacing koi. “Except that he is my son, and in your world I have become my own nightmare.”

Phrased that way…it hurts. Kakashi watches him for a long moment, trying to imagine it, and…it’s all too easy. Because the him who exists here—Kakashi is probably _his_ greatest nightmare, or at least a part of it. Everyone dead, two of them because of Kakashi directly, the rest because he couldn’t save them, nothing left of the strange family he’s grown up in except a handful of names carved into the Memorial and a twisted reflection of this quiet, calculating man.

“I've never really met the other you,” he says. “I was part of the ANBU team sent after you when you fled the village, but—that was the only time we’d ever been face-to-face. I don’t know how you're different, but I can see that you are.” He manages a small smile, just barely crinkling his eyes. “The other you would have gutted my father for manhandling him like that, at the very least.”

That gets a roll of Orochimaru’s eyes, exasperated but touched with well-hidden fondness. “I've been tempted many times, believe me,” he says dryly, scooping up a handful of pins and letting them trickle through his fingers. “Your father can be exhausting.”

But there's a warmth to his eyes, a small smile on his lips. Kakashi looks at him, at that expression that he can't term anything but _love_ , and realizes with sudden, shocking clarity that for all they look alike, the Snake Sannin he knows is nothing but a warped, shattered shadow of this man, like looking into a splintered mirror.  Their chakra might feel similar, but it’s very much not, and their minds might as well belong to different people.

He hopes, with unexpected fervor, that his double never has cause to meet his dimension’s version of Orochimaru. It would be…heartbreaking for him, he thinks.

“Did my father give you those?” he asks, eyes flickering down to the pins Orochimaru is fiddling with.

Orochimaru blinks, surprised, and drops his gaze to look at them as well. Instantly, his smile deepens, warms, and he scoops them up in his hands. “These? Oh, no. These were from you, cub.”

So _strange_ , hearing the old pet name from Orochimaru’s lips, but the grief in his face is sliding away, and Kakashi can live with it and not twitch too badly. Especially when there's information like that to distract him. He eyes Orochimaru, then the pins, and winces.

Catching his reaction, Orochimaru snorts a little, and picks them up, sliding three of them into place. Like stars against the darkness of his hair, and always when Kakashi has looked at Orochimaru the madness has overwhelmed everything else, but here, he’s…well. Kakashi can begin to understand why his father calls Orochimaru _lovely_.

“You were…six,” he says thoughtfully, and Kakashi is equal parts interested and slightly horrified on the part of his alternate self. Stories that start like that are rarely free of embarrassment to the subject. “There was a festival—Tanabata—and your father insisted I leave the library long enough to attend. You saw these at one of the booths and bought them for me with money from your first D-rank. I tried to refuse to wear them in public, but…” He smiles, rueful and fond. “You and your father are both very, very good at manipulating me when you set your minds to it.”

That is…so bewildering. So _ridiculous._ Really, Kakashi thinks, utterly baffled, and rubs his hands over his face. What the hell even _is_ this world. Just—how. _Why_. Orochimaru is his damned _mother_ , forget the ‘step’ part, and apparently it’s always been that way. Apparently he’s _happy_ with it that way. _Everyone_ is happy that way.

“They—suit you,” he says, and even manages to make it sound like the compliment it’s intended as, rather than the insult it could be.

“So you’ve said before.” Orochimaru casts a glance at him, then at the sun, and gathers up the rest of the pins, sliding them over the edges of his sleeves. Then he rises, eerily graceful in a way that speaks of bones and joints in different places than in a normal human, and turns to offer Kakashi a hand. “I was about to make a cup of tea. Would you like to join me, Kakashi?”

The answer should be _not in a million years, missing-nin_. At least in his universe. Here and now, Kakashi looks into Orochimaru’s pale face, and…can't find the madness he remembers so well. Can find the viciousness, the anger, the _hate_. Whatever his father saved Orochimaru from, whatever Sakumo did to pull him back into humanity and make him something closer to _normal_ , Kakashi thinks that Sakumo should be branded a miracle-worker for that alone.

“Sure,” he says, and only hesitates a little before taking the offered hand.

It’s warm beneath his fingers, and somehow that’s the most surprising thing of all. No snake-scales, no cold skin, no tangible trace of insanity. Just a strong grip, long fingers, callused skin as Orochimaru pulls him to his feet.

 _And I have a_ son _, Hatake_.

He thinks of it again, watching Orochimaru turn to lead him back to the house. Thinks of having a father, and then—

_And I have a mother. Who would have guessed?_

The thought sends a flicker of amusement through him, a dart of something almost like laughter. Incredulous, maybe, and confused, but—

“Are you coming, cub—Kakashi?”

“I’ll be right there,” Kakashi answers, adds, “Orochimaru,” under his breath to see if it sounds less weird when it's not just in his head, and tries to fit this familiar stranger into his mental image of a happy family. Of _his_ happy family.

Gods, his head hurts. This whole world is beautiful, but it’s also utterly _insane_.


	6. Primary Konoha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Minato's house](http://iennidesign.deviantart.com/art/Hidden-Leaf-Village-Minato-and-Kushina-s-House-502048845) is only briefly shown briefly in the anime, and I'm not sure it ever appears in the manga, but the design is so neat I had to include it. No idea if it survived the Kyuubi attack, but… *handwaves* We’ll say it did.

Barely five yards through this strange Konoha's main gates, Team 7 clustered around him and Gai bounding ahead, and Kakashi realizes just what’s different about their universes.

There's a man in the shadows, old and slightly stooped, with bandages around one side of his face and a cane in his hand. He’s watching the new arrivals carefully, gaze as cold and calculating as anything Kakashi has ever felt before, and in a rush it brings the hackles up on the back of Kakashi's neck. A growl rumbles in his chest, slides up his throat, and it’s only sheer willpower that keeps it from leaving his mouth in a snarl.

So many differences.

Just one cause.

“Kakashi-sensei?” Naruto asks, and at least his voice is a little quieter than normal, if not quite managing to be subtle. “Is something wrong?”

Kakashi drops his gaze to the three kids, all looking at him with varying degrees of concern, and ignores the thoughtful gazes of the two tokujo lingering on his back. “I'm fine,” he says easily, and is grateful that the mask makes it easy to fake a convincing smile. “I just figured out one of the reasons our worlds are so different, that’s all.”

Sakura looks curious and opens her mouth to ask, but before she can Kakashi looks away, at the streets around them, and asks Genma, “I assume my house is in the same place?”

Genma's eyes are cautious, even though his smile is lazy. “Well, it might be, but you don’t live there. You’ve got a tiny little rat-trap apartment a few blocks over. I can show you, if you want.”

It takes him a moment to comprehend. A moment to understand the words, recognize the implications as framed by what he’s already learned.

_My father?_

_Suicide. You found the body_.

In their house, because there's nowhere else it could have been. In their _home_ , where Kakashi and Obito live together, where his father and Orochimaru share a life and a relationship that’s the closest thing to true love Kakashi has ever witnessed. The house he was born in, grew up in, and—

Gone, now. The relic of an unforgotten tragedy, a loss that was the first stone in an avalanche. Kakashi swallows, steels himself, and—understands.

He doesn’t want to go home to that, either.

There's a hand on his sleeve, tugging carefully, and he looks down to see Naruto staring up at him, face set in determined, stubborn lines. “You can stay at my place, Kakashi-sensei!” he offers, and the title is one they’ve switched to using, but which Kakashi can't quite bring himself to make them drop. He…likes it. Had never expected to, had never had even the slightest interest in a genin team, but—

Well. They're pretty amazing, for just being twelve.

“Thank you,” he says honestly, and scuffs a hand through spiky blond hair so similar to Minato's. “Your parents’ house is nice, isn’t it? I always loved the library.”

Naruto freezes, eyes going wide. “My parents had a house?” he asks, and his voice wobbles.

With a quiet sound of sympathy, Sakura touches his arm, then looks up at Kakashi as well. “Naruto doesn’t live there,” she offers, when the boy doesn’t say anything else. “He has an apartment, too.”

The only thing that could top this off is…well. Now there's a bad thought. Kakashi swallows, looks around to find the third member of the team, and tries to make his voice light as he says, “Let me guess. You still live in the Uchiha district?”

“Compound,” Sasuke corrects quietly, but doesn’t disagree. “The Uchiha were moved to a compound near the wall after the Kyuubi attacked.”

This place is—terrible. _So_ terrible. Like the worst kind of hell, all dressed up in familiar wrappings to make it that much more horrible.

“No,” Kakashi says flatly. “I— _no_. Just _no_.” He turns to Genma and Aoba, both watching with a mix of interest and amusement and concern, and orders, “Show us where the Namikaze house is.”

The tokujo trade glances. Aoba shrugs, hooks a thumb over his shoulder, and raises a brow in silent question. Genma hums thoughtfully, then nods, tips his head in the other direction, and waves a goodbye to the older man.

Gods. No wonder Aoba is trying to get into Genma's pants. They're already married, just without the benefits of sex and a joint bank account.

“This way,” Genma says, tucking his hands into his pockets. His eyes linger on Naruto for a moment, then slide away, and he says, “House has been closed up for years. You might have to do some spring cleaning.”

“I can clean,” Naruto says, and that stubbornness is leeching back into his voice, even though he hasn’t let go of Kakashi's sleeve. “I'm really good at it! I clean my own place all the time.”

Naruto has _never had a parent_. Never had _anyone_ in any way that counts, and it makes Kakashi _angry_. His double was still Minato's student in this universe, was even closer to him than Kakashi is to his Minato according to what Aoba said. So why the _hell_ did Naruto grow up alone? What has the other Kakashi been _doing_ all these years?

“We can help you,” Sakura volunteers, trying for a smile at him. “I help with the chores all the time.”

“Hn,” is Sasuke's contribution, but he doesn’t turn towards another street. He follows, his own hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed ahead, support silent but hardly unnoticed.

Minato's house is, at least, exactly as Kakashi knows it—up a flight of stone stairs from the street, with the house itself built atop a tall, circular wooden base that Kakashi knows holds Minato and Kushina's personal training room. There's another flight of steps up to the main portion of the house, a large square building with a red roof, the second level a half-cylinder perched on top with a balcony looking out over the streets. A wide, squat tower rises from the trees beneath the building, attached to the back of the house and housing Kushina and Minato's library.

The last time Kakashi was here was just two days ago, dropping by with Obito to give Kushina a set of scrolls from Uzushio that they’d come across on a mission. The lights had glowed brightly from the windows, and the smell of her homemade ramen had hit them right in their empty stomachs the moment she opened the door. She’d laughed at them, invited them in and fed them as she poured over the scrolls, and then seen them off with kisses on the cheek and a cheerful wave.

Now the entire house is dark, and there's a barrier of half-rotted wood propped midway up the stairs to keep people out. The steps themselves have a thick layer of dirt on them, streaky from where it’s rained but otherwise undisturbed, and Kakashi feels his skin crawl a little at the eerie feeling of false familiarity.

“This place?” Naruto asks with undisguised interest, and when Kakashi glances down his eyes are wide with wondering enthusiasm. “It’s so _cool_! This is _my_ house, Kakashi-sensei?”

“Yeah.” It’s Genma, surprisingly, who answers. His gaze lingers on the darkened windows, too, and there's something sad and lonely in his eyes. Kakashi thinks of his position as Minato's guard, practically every day spent in close quarters with the man, and then losing Minato to a creature like the Kyuubi, which no normal tokujo would ever have been able to stop. That must have hurt him, too. “Pretty neat, huh? No one’s touched it, so everything should still be set up inside. I’ll leave you to it.” He gives the four of them a lazy wave, then steps back.

“You aren’t going to come in?” Naruto asks, but there's something like recognition on his face, understanding, and sadness in his eyes. “You—you’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

Genma pauses, still turned away, and sighs. “Yeah,” he says again, wry. “Namikaze Minato was a great man. I've got some good memories here.”

He doesn’t say, _I don’t want to lose them, and if I look at it now, I might_. But Kakashi can hear it, feel it hovering unspoken. Thinks of a quiet, _Like I said, it’s been hard_ , and—

Damn it, but he _hates_ this place. Hates whatever twist of events let Danzō live but killed his father, drove Orochimaru out of the village and let Kushina and Minato both die, destroyed Obito and Rin both. How can so much darkness even _exist_ in one universe? With everything that’s gone wrong, what's managed to go _right_?

“Later,” he says mildly, and pretends not to see the relief that makes Genma's shoulders slump a little. He turns away from the tokujo’s wave as the man heads down the street, and instead focuses on the house that by all rights belongs to Naruto. “Come on,” he urges. “We’ve got twelve years of dirt to scrub off.”

“My favorite,” Sasuke mutters, but he’s the first to head up the stairs, vaulting over the wooden boards that cross the steps.

“Wait up, teme!” Naruto shouts, racing after him. “It’s my house!”

Sakura sighs, pools chakra under her feet, and jumps to the top of the stone wall the stairs are built into, handily beating both boys to the top. Logic, Kakashi guesses with some amusement, is always going to be her greatest weapon against the two of them. “Don’t be so slow,” she scolds, though Kakashi can hear the hint of a tease in her tone. “It will be dark soon!”

Sasuke harrumphs, crossing his arms over his chest as he slows to a walk, and Naruto runs into him bodily, bounces off, and only just manages not to tumble backwards down the steps.

“Hey!” he protests, then is instantly distracted. “Hey, there's a garden over here!”

“You mother’s,” Kakashi says, following at a more reasonable pace. He smiles at the awe on Naruto's face as he stares at the small patch of cleared ground, still divided into neat beds. There are weeds choking it, almost enough to obscure the whole thing, but the shape of it is still clear, and it probably won't take too much work to bring it back to some semblance of order. “Why don’t you go try the door, Naruto? It should open for you.”

If it doesn’t, Kakashi himself should still be able to bypass the protective seals on the place, but he’s different enough from the other Kakashi that he doesn’t want to be the first to test it. Kushina is _creative_ about guarding what’s hers.

“Yeah!” All but vibrating with enthusiasm, Naruto bolts for the second set of steps, taking them three at a time in quick jumps. The front door immediately opens under his push, and he disappears inside. Sakura follows quickly, clearly curious, and Sasuke trails after her, trying not to look too interested. Kakashi brings up the rear, wistfully amused by all three of them.

When he steps inside, Naruto is just standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring around. There are still dishes in the drain board, food in the cupboards. A dust-coated glass sits beside the sink, long since abandoned, and a familiar white haori edged with flames lies across the back of one of the kitchen chairs. The table is clear except for a scroll, halfway unrolled, with familiar markings on it. A twelve-point seal, strong enough to trap a bijuu, drawn out in Minato's familiar hand.

Kakashi picks it up and rerolls it without looking too closely, trying not to consider the fact that he’s holding the murder weapon that killed his sensei.

With trembling fingers and wide eyes, Naruto gently pulls the haori off the back of the chair, running a hand along the writing on the back. “He…my dad really was the Yondaime,” he whispers. “He was the Hokage. He was my _hero_.”

Sakura's eyes are sympathetic, the stitches on her wound throwing strange shadows across her face in the light spilling through the open door. “I never noticed before,” she says, “but…you look a lot like him. Like the picture in the Hokage’s office, and in the Academy. Doesn’t he, Sasuke?”

Naruto blinks, startled, and turns to look at the Uchiha. Sasuke studies him for a moment, then nods. “You do,” he agrees, and casts his gaze around the room. After another moment, he points at the doorway leading into the darkened living room. “My—” He stops, breathes through what could be fury or grief or a mix of both, and finishes more quietly, “My family kept photos in the main room.”

Still clinging to the haori, Naruto heads that way, steps hesitant. Sasuke swallows, tucks his hands into his pockets, and follows, shoulders half-hunched. Sakura watches them, biting her lip, and then takes a breath.

“There should be a light switch somewhere,” she volunteers, edging cautiously around the doorframe with one hand on the wall. “I think it might—there.”

It’s dim, dusty—clearly the fixture hasn’t been cleaned in a very long time—but it’s light, and it’s enough to illuminate the overstuffed couch, the comfortable chairs, the bookshelves with their carefully placed photos. Naruto doesn’t try to touch them, just stops and stares from a few paces back, eyes taking in the image of his mother and father laughing together.

“I've never seen my mom before,” he says, expression torn between wondering and very, very sad. “She’s so _beautiful_.”

Lingering by one of the windows, Sasuke shuts his eyes, leaning back against the wall. “I guess,” he says carefully, not quite reluctant and nowhere near happy, “that we’re…similar.” He opens his eyes, and when he sees Naruto watching him with some surprise, he adds, “I don’t remember how my mom looked when she smiled. Just how she looked…after.”

After she died. After she was murdered, and Kakashi wonders how he’s ever supposed to look at his version of Itachi again without imagining him slaughtering his entire clan, cutting down his parents without care. Did becoming a shinobi really break him so badly?

Naruto's expression shifts to determined, and then determinedly cheerful, with a little bit of self-consciousness hidden underneath. “Sakura-chan, teme, you should both stay, like Kakashi-sensei is going to! We can have a sleepover! I've never had one before!”

There's a tense pause. Sasuke stiffens, and Sakura bites her lip. She glances from Naruto to Sasuke to Kakashi, and then says with equal determination, “That’s a good idea, Naruto. It might be late before we’re done cleaning.” A quick check of the sun, and she offers, “I’ll go tell my parents, and…pick up ramen on my way back?”

“Yeah!” Naruto agrees enthusiastically, then digs for his wallet. “I think…I should have enough…um, maybe?”

Usually, Kakashi has to be pried away from his money, or tricked out of it. But…just this once he thinks it will be all right to break that habit. He’s not living alone on a newly graduated genin’s budget, at the very least.

“Here,” he says, and tosses Sakura his wallet. Well, technically his _double_ ’s wallet, since they exchanged clothes as well as universes. And with that in mind… “It’s my treat. Go crazy. Buy whatever you want, and as much as you can carry.”

This Kakashi is a jounin just like he is, and apparently pays rent for a tiny apartment. There's no way he _can't_ afford it, so Kakashi feels absolutely no guilt in the decision.

Sakura, apparently realizing what he’s doing, gives him an exasperated look, but—clearly acquainted with her Kakashi's tightfistedness—she doesn’t protest. “I’ll be back soon,” she promises, tucking the wallet away and heading for the door.

There's a moment of silence in her wake. Naruto's eyes have drifted back to the picture of his laughing parents, and Sasuke's eyes are on Naruto. Then the Uchiha shakes himself a little, pushes away from the wall, and says, “Dobe, get us buckets and soap. I’ll find rags. I don’t want to spend all day cleaning because you were moping.”

“Teme!” Naruto snaps, spinning, but instead of grief his eyes are snapping with what is undoubtedly Kushina's temper. “I bet I get done before you do!”

“Hn.” Sasuke turns away, but Kakashi can recognize an Uchiha’s satisfaction very easily. Obito usually looks like that when he’s goaded Kakashi out of a funk after a bad mission.

And, well, isn’t that an interesting thought?

Kakashi snickers to himself a little as the boys argue their way out of the room, and sets to opening every window he can find to let in some light and fresh air. Other Kakashi is _definitely_ going to have an interesting time when puberty hits fully.

(Danzō, he thinks, and feels a shiver down his spine. Can't forget.

He thinks of his father dead, that man the cause with the whispers and accusations he started, and.

_You succeeded here. You killed my father, twisted Oro into something he shouldn’t be. I'm going to kill you for that._

Maybe once he was just Sakumo's son, but Kakashi can't even remember that far back. He’s a snake as much as he is a wolf, and this world is going to have to learn that the hard way.)


End file.
